Application Servers or Web Server for Spring Framework

Question

First of all: it may be a question for beginners. However, after several searches, I can’t find anything that could lead me further.

Basically, what are the reasons for choosing an application server within Spring to develop a medium complex web application? I am new to Spring, created some complex WebSphere several years ago. Reading about Spring, I see that it comes with a good bunch of functions (transactions, persistence, messaging, connectors, etc.). Is Spring difficult to scale or manage in a clustered environment?

Any comments are welcome.

thanks

Answer 1

Spring is awesome.

Your terminology, however, is far. Spring is a Framework. This is the library you use to write your web application.

An application server is what your application is running. You need both. For example, use the Spring Framework to create an application that runs on the Tomcat application server.

Answer 2

EAR files are optional for Java EE development.

This is not either / or: if you are deploying a Java EE application, you need some kind of container.

I have deployed Spring applications on Tomcat and WebLogic. I think WebLogic is the best Java EE application server on the market. My decision about whether it will be deployed or not will be based solely on availability.

You saw that Spring has its own Java EE container. He deploys Tomcat and marries him with OSGi and Spring. I have not tried it yet, but if the quality is similar to their framework, it will be very promising.

You really ask: "When will I write the application using Spring? When should I choose EJB3?"

Nowadays, Spring is preferred. I can do perseverance, transactions, messaging, web services and everything I need.

Answer 3

Bpapa,

you found me there, yes, the terminology is wrong. I meant Spring + a web container against application servers. Of course, the web application must be deployed somewhere. I think this translates the question into server functions in accordance with my first post.

Topology Example: Spring + Tomcat vs. WebSphere

As a side note: people claim that Tomcat is an application server, many consider it rather a web container. You could not deploy the EAR file to Tomcat, right? All that is required is WAR, am I right? But this is too academic.

thanks a lot

Answer 4

Rod Johnson "Expert 1: 1 Java EE Development Without EJB" is the foundation for Spring. This is a great book, but I would say that it is a little outdated. The book was written with EJB2 in mind. It was published before Spring became an open source project. Now the structure is up to version 3.0, so I would say that the book has only historical interest. I would recommend a more modern approach to the issue that takes into account Spring 3.0 and EJB3.

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